Saturday, October 30, 2010

On Saturday 30th October 2010 a group of Amusements loving Crazy Golfers headed to 'The Buttons' following the end of the first day's play in the 2010 Castle Golf World Crazy Golf Championships to take part in the first-ever '£2 Tat Challenge'.

This amusements challenge contest saw members of various Minigolf Clubs competing to win the most amount of 2p falls prizes with a stake of £2. The brains behind the event were Scott ‘Donkey Gringo’ Lancley (the International Worlds Crazy Air Squash Champion) and Emily ‘Coach’ Gottfried.

13 players took part and the final 'Order of Merit' is below, with 'Johnson' Paul Johnson taking the victory (and the prize of 'All the Tat') with a haul of nine pieces of tat won with only £2 worth of 2p's!!!

Monday, October 25, 2010

If you're on Twitter and are also into your Minigolf, Crazy Golf, Adventure Golf etc. then check out the Minigolf Twitter List - A list of Twitterers and Tweets from the Minigolfing World. I created the list to keep track of all the conversations taking place on the micro-blogging site by minigolfers/minigolf businesses etc.

With Twitter you are able to search within real-time conversations for mentions of key words - so for example you can search for mentions of the word 'minigolf' by typing the word in the search function. You can also enable the word to be clicked on in a tweet itself by 'hash-tagging' it, that is to put a # as a prefix, so minigolf becomes #minigolf.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

On our recent trip to London we found a few new Gluten Free places to eat at/buy GF products from, these included:

Starbucks - Now do Gluten and Wheat Free sandwiches, salads and cakes :-) The service from the very knowledgeable staff at the O2 was very pleasing. When ordering the cakes ask for them to be wrapped if you have Special Dietary Requirements, as they will bring you a sealed one that is not cross-contaminated. I had a Cheese and Coleslaw Sandwich and a Chocolate Brownie. Very tasty indeed. The Sangers are made with Genius Bread.

Las Iguanas - We've previously eaten at the London Eye and Manchester Trafford Centre branches and had no problems (Las Igauanas does some great food), but we had very poor service and a nightmare experience at the restaurant at the O2. Despite me stating I was a Coeliac and what I must avoid, my starter (Gambas) was served with bread and my main (Ensopado De Carne - the first time I've eaten Goat!) was served with flour-coated deep fried Plantain!?

The Chicago Rib Shack - They have Gluten Free options (spelled 'Gluton') on the menu. Our server was very knowledgeable about Special Dietary requirements. I had a huge T-Bone Steak, along with some enoyable Cocktails, including a Mohito and an Old Fashioned (if anyone knows the recipe do let me know?).

Whole Foods Market - Had a selection of Gluten Free products. They were not that easy to find as they don't have a dedicated GF Section, instead products are mixed in with 'normal' food. I did however pick up some bottles of a different 'Coeliac-friendly' Beer - from St Peter's Brewery - which was nice :-)

The tournament was played on an UrbanCrazy designed 6-hole course over six rounds. The first three rounds were played using the course’s ‘easy’ settings, and the second round using the ‘hard’ hole settings. In the field of 12 players Richard went into the second round in third place having scored a total of 40(+4), he followed this up with a 43(+7) for a total of 83(+11). London’s Jon Angel won the tournament with a score of 77(+5). Defending champion Brad Shepherd was runner-up on 79(+7), and Chris Jones third with 82(+10).

After the tournament Richard said “Thank you to the London Minigolf Club for the invitation to play in the LIT, it was a great event played on a very good course. Well played to Jon Angel for the win, a nice wire-to-wire victory. I’ll be ruing the five shots I took on hole three in the second round, if it wasn’t for that I’d have been looking good for a podium finish.”

With four events left in the 2010 BMGA Season Richard is currently ranked 9th of 91 players in the BMGA Order of Merit Rankings, 8th of 129 in the BMGA Season Only Rankings, and 31st of 255 in the Castle Golf World Crazy Golf Rankings.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A tweet from The Putting Penguin about the local history of minigolf in Illinois linked to a story on the Register-Mail website in Galesburg, USA, which mentioned that in Abingdon, Illinois there was a 27-hole Miniature Golf course known as the “Upsandowns”.

This prompted me to write a little bit about Crazy Golf in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Prior to moving to Luton a decade ago I grew up and lived in Abingdon and the Crazy Golf course at the Abbey Meadows was the first course I ever played many years ago.

The course was also revisited as part of the Crazy World of Minigolf Tour on the 18th August 2007 and became the 31st course played on the tour.

There was also an Italian Restaurant in Weymouth that has Gluten Free options, but it was fully booked on the Saturday night. we'll try it out next time we visit.

Thank you also goes to fellow BMGA Tour Minigolfer Peter Jones for a Gluten Free Fish & Chips tip-off, as he'd spotted the 'Gluten Free Options' sign in the Old Harbour Fish & Chip Shop window. If only more places advertised the fact they offer menu choices for Coeliacs - they'd certainly do more business!

Looking through some of the local tourist information and pamphlets I also noticed that in Bournemouth there is a Mexican restaurant with a Gluten Free menu. It's called 'Coriander' and the website is http://www.coriander-restaurant.co.uk/ - we'll check it out next time.

Monday, October 11, 2010

While driving back from the 2010 Weymouth Open minigolf competition on the 10th October we had to take a number of detours in order to miss out the horrendous traffic problems on the Motorways. The solution was to travel back on the A and B Roads, one of which led us through Maidenhead.

Taking a turn onto the Riverside it dawned on us we had visited Maidenhead before, and we were in fact very close to the 18-hole Eternit Miniature Golf / Crazy Golf course at Riverside Gardens!

This time however, it became the 204th Minigolf course played on the Crazy World of Minigolf Tour.

It's well worth a visit to play the course and it is quite tricky indeed.

In our Irregular Mini Golf Tour match-up Emily managed to get a hole-in-one on the 5th hole, and after the 18-hole round we were tied on 49(+13). The sudden-death play-off lasted four holes, when Emily managed a two, which I had no reply to. Emily received a postcard/certificate for the win from the course owner!